how hard is it to do a website for gods sake

The more I deal with websites outside the main techy sites the more I realise how many cowboys or just plain stupid people are churning out rubbish and calling it a website.

First cornwall county council puts up a page advertising jobs claiming you can apply online when you can only apply online if you can get past their broken vbscript form validation... thats right clientside vbscript. I have even have internet explorer on windows that doesn't have vbscript installed. The only two things in the world that should be written in vbscript are virus and plugin detection inept exploder... anyway this means I can't use their site to apply online and this after spending an hour or so filling in their stupid form (why can't they just read a CV, it has to be easier than scribbles in tiny different coloured squares that their application forms demand).Anyway calling them up to report the problem they ask what line number the error said - duh its vbscript : it doesn't even run, I explained how to fix it but its obviously too hard to write javascript. Idiots!

I have also been attempting to use the uk job centre website (jobcentreplus - jobcentre minus minus more like). It is also truly rubbish. This evening it broke in a new way giving me an empty dropdown instead of allowing me to select full time or permenant (of course its another asp site - whenever I use an asp website I just know they don't know what they are doing and that programming is too hard for the poor little children they must pay to produce this crap).

The jobsearch makes jobserve look a) full and b) amazing. I mean - no keyword search all you can do is put job type and job title and then your town or postcode - only one area at a time of course.

What an incredible waste of time

I mean what puzzles me is how hard can it be to do a website - neither of these websites are doing anything hard - its all stuff that has been solved many times over and what any halfway competant web developer just out of 6th form could do better than in their sleep.

Maybe if they fired all these idiots I could replace a dozen or so and a) the internet might be useful and b) I could pay my mortgage.

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In most cases these sites are done on shoestring budgets -- most likely for prices you would flat out bust a gut from laughter over.

Quality website development that is cross-platform compliant, looks good, and functions well for the vast majority of people is not something your average sixth-grader (is that what 6th form means) can accomplish.

I have been doing Internet development for 10 years and have seen an amazing amount of absolute garbage; I however am not so conceited to believe, without any inside

This just the thing that is annoying - the government is throwing money at egovernment and produced guidelines and suchlike.

Internal policies on hiring inexperienced internal staff to do the jobs of professionals combined with pointy haired council bosses expecting everything to be microsoft (because they recognise the name from tv ads) ensure that huge ammounts of money are wasted on new computers and licenses and training inexperienced people to use crap technology like asp.